We Don't Need Permission
by kdntjb
Summary: In her seven years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Aubrey breaks the rules seven times, all in the name of friendship. [Aubrey centric. Background Bechloe.]


Author's note: They were this close to being illegal Animagi, but I couldn't figure out what they'd be and scrapped that plan. Inspired by les cousins dangeruex's 10 sentence Bechloe AU on tumblr. Of course, me being me, I had to put my own spin on things... (I.e. Make everything about Aubrey.)

* * *

**1.**

It's the first term of the first year Aubrey spends at Hogwarts. (Wow. Whoa. Hogwarts. School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Aubrey still feels shaken, as though it was just yesterday a wizard with a fondness for plaid magicked himself to her front door with an invitation to a whole other world.)

When she read 'Hogwarts: A History' (she had to if she wanted the slightest inkling what the Wizarding World was going to throw at her), Aubrey is very sure that Hufflepuff was described as house that valued steadfast, hard work. It was even in that annoying song the Sorting Hat came up with. Hufflepuffs toil on with their heads down, quiet and unassuming, but strong and resilient. She can get behind that image.

So if Hufflepuffs are meant to work hard, why does Chloe Beale keep bothering her?

The other first year Hufflepuffs have long since scurried off the common room to chat but Aubrey elected to finish off the rest of her work before the weekend kicks off. Chloe is restless, sometimes sitting on her bed flicking through magazines sometimes pacing up and down, sometimes looking over the Muggle posters Aubrey has pinned, very neatly, over her bed. If she's bored, Aubrey can't really fathom a reason why she's sticking around with a girl who was very clear about her plans for Friday.

"Don't you ever get sick of all that work?" Chloe asks.

"I don't," says Aubrey, even though tiredness is pulling at her eyelids and a yawn in bubbling away in her throat.

"Why not?" Chloe says, like it finally occurred to her to ask. (Bless her, it probably did.)

"I go to a _magic school_," Aubrey deadpans. Her nose is still buried in the books. "In a magic castle with magic classes and magic friends. This may seem very normal to you but, I assure you, it is not normal in the least where I come from. It is a magic school. I'm never complaining about homework in my life. I get up at five everyday to do this. I go to a magic school." She says it one more time, just to be super clear. "_Magic school_."

"Of course you do," Chloe says. "We're witches."

Aubrey sighs. It's different for Chloe, who lives and breathes magic, who was born into it and who's right to it isn't questioned at every other turn. Chloe is a witch. Aubrey has to 'integrate'. School is, for the moment, literally the only thing that grounds Aubrey to a world that should have been her birthright: a world that could vanish in a second on the world of her sceptical father's take on her paltry grade or apparent mediocrity. Besides, it's a magic school! _Magic_!

She finally turns and looks at Chloe's expectant face, big blue eyes shining hopefully. Instead of the rant, she says, "Never mind."

"You shouldn't do that," Chloe says.

"Do what?" Aubrey says. Her interest in marginally piqued. Is there a bit of Wizarding etiquette she didn't know about? The tiny nuances could enthral Aubrey for days.

"You wanted to tell me something, right?" Chloe says. "You should tell me. Because I don't know what you wanted to say if you just think it."

"It's private," Aubrey retorts.

Chloe bites her lip and makes a thoughtful noise. Aubrey thinks the matter's finally been put to rest when, instead, the redhead grabs her arm and drags up her to standing.

"What are you—?" Aubrey can barely get a word in edgewise before Chloe is hauling her one direction (to the door, the more alert part of her mind tells her). There's something steadfast in those impossibly blue eyes (Aubrey is glad she can just blame everything on magic now) so Aubrey's only token protest is, "At least let me get my robes!"

Chloe can't stop giggling, maybe too happy she's finally wrenched Aubrey away from her stack of books, but they somehow get dressed and sneak their way up all the moving staircases to a special door that leads all the way up to an open sky. Hogwarts in the middle of nowhere, so there's no dust or haze or light pollution to obscure the stars. They've had astronomy class before, sure, but it's never been quite like this, with no telescope or charts in the way to ground Aubrey's focus. Now it's just endless skies and the cold air with Chloe beaming at her and Chloe's bright blue eyes on her. Against the sky, it feels like they're the only two people in the whole castle.

"Do you like it?" Chloe says. "My brothers told me how to get up here. I wasn't sure I followed the instructions right but here we are!"

Aubrey nods dully. She says, "Why?"

"You said you needed somewhere private to talk, silly," Chloe explains. "So here we are. Private!"

Chloe Beale is one of the most flummoxing people Aubrey will ever meet in her life. It must be as sure to her as gravity or light is to the world. People aren't supposed to help each other. People fight each other and compete against each other and push above one another to gasp for air. That's what Aubrey's father has been teaching her for the last eleven years and that's what the last two years of her life, alone and motherless, have just reinforced.

"What are you doing?" Aubrey thinks, aloud. Chloe is not doing anything a person should. And, also, she's pretty sure they're not supposed to be up here and there's no big wall to stop them from falling over the side of the castle. They could be killed or, worse, expelled.

"I'm helping, duh," Chloe says. "So you can talk. My whole family says it's bad to keep things bottled inside. It's like with magic. Leave it in there too long and then it just goes whoosh pop!" She hands mime the appropriate exploding symbols along with her voice.

"You're weird," Aubrey says. "I don't get it. Why are you helping me?"

Chloe just looks confused. "We're Hufflepuffs," she says. "Hufflepuffs stick together."

"I..." Aubrey starts. She catches herself and stop, trying to look anywhere but Chloe.

"I got lonely sometimes," Chloe says, "when I was little and all my brothers were at school without me. I know some people don't want people to help them, but I think you look sad all the time and I think that it'd be a shame if I could make someone feel better because I was too scared they didn't want me to help. So you can be mad at me, if you want, or you can not say anything at all, or maybe I could give you a hug, maybe, if you wanted?"

"You're weird," Aubrey says again, trying not to cry. "You're so weird."

Chloe gives her the hug anyway.

Somehow, Aubrey starts telling her everything. Chloe's right. It does make her feel better. She tells her everything.

She doesn't even mind when they get found up there later and Hufflepuff loses a hundred house points. Chloe holds her hand through everyone's glares and even those don't last long before the prefects remind everyone they're all in this together. It isn't Gryffindor or Slytherin or Ravenclaw.

Hufflepuffs stick together.

* * *

**2.**

"What's a hatstall?" Chloe says. She's finally reading 'Hogwarts: A History' because Aubrey had a tendency to quote from it all the time last year. (She's over it now, mostly. Okay, usually. Semi-usually. The novelty that comes with the knowing she is, in fact, a witch, will never fade one hundred percent, but she's stopped walking around school gawking at everything around campus so it's lost at least some of it's lustre.)

"It's when the Sorting Hat takes more than five minutes to place a student, most usually because they have a personality suited to more than one house," Aubrey explains. This is the routine they've developed: a quiet companionship as Aubrey reads and Chloe...does whatever she does while Aubrey reads. (Aubrey is not the most astute about her surroundings, especially when she's reading. Quidditch seems out of the question.)

"Hmm." Chloe tilts her head thoughtfully.

She keeps making that noise, rolling around on her bed into increasingly ridiculous expressions of thought.

"Is there any reason in particular you're asking?" Aubrey broaches, venturing to break the almost silence.

"If that's all it is, then why were the— why was Barb making such a big deal over them today?"

"Barb?"

"Yeah, she and the other girls were all talking about hatstalls."

"You don't think hatstalls are odd?"

"Why would I?" Chloe answers. "People are all special and complex! The Sorting Hat must be really good at his job if he can place anyone at all, so why wouldn't he want to take his time every now and again to get things right?"

Aubrey smiles. "Hatstalls are very rare, actually. Barb and the others were probably excited by the novelty of it all. Hatstalls only happen once every fifty years or so."

"But weren't you a hatstall?" Chloe asks.

"No," Aubrey says. It was four and a half minutes if the records were right.

"You were! You were, I remember now!" she declares, snapping her fingers in triumph. "You were a hat stall. We all waited, like, at least five minutes for the hat to decide where you were going to go. I got really bored sitting at the Hufflepuff table and started picking at the food, and when it finally announced Hufflepuff I got shocked at splattered a whole bunch down my robes."

"...I'm glad I made such a strong first impression," Aubrey says diplomatically.

"But the point is you were a hatstall!" Chloe claps her hands together, excited like she's found a great secret. Aubrey knows this is the queue for girls' night gossiping. "So what were your choices?"

"It wasn't— I'm not—" Aubrey sputters. Four and a half minutes do not a hatstall make.

"You can't really tell me the hat spent all that time figuring out your personality," Chloe says. Aubrey should feel offended, only she's come to learn that Chloe talks faster than she thinks and that she should always be given the benefit of the doubt. "I bet you argued with him a lot, though. So what were the options?"

Unstoppable force meets immovable object, and Aubrey caves.

"Hufflepuff," she concedes, "and Slytherin. It asked me, 'Do you want Hufflepuff or Slytherin?' and I was so upset I considered asking for Ravenclaw just to spite the thing."

"You didn't want to be in Hufflepuff?" Chloe asks, brows furrowing.

Gryffindor is the hero house. Gryffindor is where the brave and the daring and all the important people in history who ever struck it out on their own came from. If her father was a wizard, she knows where he'd want her to go. He's definitely a hero.

"You're in Hufflepuff," Aubrey says, instead of thinking.

"Is that why you picked it?" Chloe replies, grinning. "Because we met on the train and you decided we'd be friends forever and ever?"

Aubrey's face feels hot and she can guess she must be beet red. To be honest, she doesn't remember saying hello to anyone on the Hogwarts Express, too terrified to break a spell that could have fallen apart any second. She doesn't remember much of anything those first few moments, to be honest, just a heady blur of excitement and her heart caught dead in her throat. But she does, a little corner of her mind tells, her remember spilling all the contents of her stomach out into the toilet of the train and having someone find her, hunched over the sink and cheerfully introduce herself as "Chloe. Chloe Beale!" before offering her some toffee to help with the motion sickness. (It wasn't motion sickness at all, but Aubrey didn't say anything to that.)

"I bet it is!" Chloe declares. She wraps an arm around Aubrey and pulls her into a tight hug. "Aubrey, that's so cute! You really are a Hufflepuff! We should celebrate!"

"Celebrate what?" Aubrey manages to say, still squeezed between Chloe's arms. The other girl is surprisingly strong. Maybe it's magic; everyone is significantly more durable than the regular human being, or at least that's the impression she gets when she sees how well the boys all survive brutal Quidditch accidents.

"You're Hufflepuff-ness," Chloe explains like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "It's the greatest thing to celebrate!"

That's how Chloe convinces her to break into the kitchens (they're right next to the dorms! It's clearly fate!) after dark (because things are always more fun if there's an element of risk and danger! It adds suspense!) to steal a bunch of food for their 'feast' celebration.

Amazingly, they don't get caught. Even if they did, Aubrey would think it was worth it.

* * *

**3.**

Hufflepuffs are meant to be champions of fair play. It's a sign of forthright morals, upstanding citizenship, generally just being a decent human being. It's something Aubrey's father has always tried to instil in her too, so, by all standards, Aubrey should be all about fair play.

But, the thing is, fair play goes hand in hand with honesty.

Aubrey cannot abide by dishonest. The law is the oil that keeps the wheels of society turning, and rules are an expression of that law, but Aubrey also believes that the law in open to interpretation and abuse and, hence, one should always have the moral perspective to look past in and examine it in the context of the problems to which it is applied.

Alice is an upperclassman by a couple of years or so, but she's also an awful prefect. (Aubrey knows the names of all the prefects, even the ones not in her house. It's important to get a sense of the job before she, hopefully, gets it.) Aubrey knows she's supposed to big on the kindness and tolerance, but she can only tolerate so much incompetence before her patience starts to fray. She also spreads terrible rumours about Chloe through school.

It starts, maybe, over the rumour that Alpheus Diggory, the fifth year Hufflepuff prefect Alice had her eye on, considered Chloe rather fanciable. From there, fuel gets tossed to the fire when Chloe's history with boys gets discovered. (Aubrey doesn't think there's anything wrong with Chloe's dating record, or even the volume of it, so why should anyone else? If anything, it shows what a go-getter Chloe is.) Chloe's eternally sunny personality doesn't endear her much to Alice either, and petty dislike grows into a sweltering inferno of antagonism.

(Talking, as it turns out, solves absolutely unless you're a Hufflepuff talking to another Hufflepuff. The other houses, for all the way they get along with Hufflepuff, regard it as a novelty house, a house of spares: amusing, pleasant people, to be sure, but not entirely worthwhile so spend energy on. Hufflepuff is a joke to them.)

It all comes to a head one evening when Chloe's broom ends up hexed and she takes a dive in the middle of an allegedly friendly inter-house Quidditch match. She breaks several bones and, though injuries like that are trivial to Wizarding World, Aubrey fumes at the sight of Chloe in pain.

Alice won't stop snickering at the sight of Chloe, crumpled underneath the stands, her prize broom shattered into splinters that are sprinkled across the field. The way she tucks away her wand into the pocket of her robes doesn't escape Aubrey's notice. Her own fingers curl around her wand (dragon heartstring core, twelve inches, a dark, sturdy wood she can't recall the name of) and before she really knows what she's doing, it springs to life and the front part of the stall Alice is leaning against (of course she had to get the front row, never mind the fact that most of Quidditch happens way above everyone's head; it makes her seem devoted and appearances are imperative at Hogwarts) collapses away, sending Alice toppling down into the same undignified heap as Chloe, though maybe a little better for wear.

Alice must have seen where the bolt of magic came from, because her head whips up and searches through the Hufflepuff stands until she meets Aubrey in the eyes.

Aubrey glares down at her from the top of the stands. She can feel Alice staring at her. She can feel the rest of Hufflepuff staring at her. She can feel Alice's friends, huddled around the gap in the stands, craning their necks between Alice on the floor and Aubrey in the air. Aubrey stands resolute; hands gripped tight, knuckles white, over her wand.

It sends a very clear message.

* * *

**4.**

Chloe loves Muggle music. The most she gets to hear of it is stuff on old records Aubrey smuggles into school to play on the gramophone in the Hufflepuff Common Room or at home, in the beast of a player that once belonged to her Muggle great-grandmother. It makes it easy for Aubrey to buy Chloe presents, especially since plenty of modern bands still like the retro cool of putting songs out on vinyl.

It would be nicer, she thinks, to get an iPod working. Or a Discman. Or a Walkman. She'd take the Walkman. She likes cassettes, mostly because of they way they sit in her hand and the way they remind her of VHS tapes and watching cartoons with her father, back in the days he'd actually spare the time to sit down with her in front of a TV.

Anyway, Chloe likes Muggle music, so Aubrey makes it one of her personal hobbies to look into ways she can get electronics to function in Hogwarts. There are plenty of other reasons this a worthwhile interest too and that makes up for the sizeably daunting task it actually is. She can manage because there is no Hufflepuff in the world less 'afraid to toil' than Aubrey.

The two of them, Aubrey and Chloe, do a lot of things together. The way it basically goes, Chloe comes up with some idea then Aubrey decides, yes, that's a great idea they should do it, then Aubrey goes and buries herself in the library for a week finding out how to make the idea happen, then they spend weeks fiddling over her stacks of research materials trying to make everything become real. It's surprisingly productive, not in the least because Aubrey is too stubborn to let anything die. It keeps her occupied in between classes too, which is always a boon. She's set herself up with something of a quasi-workshop in one of the empty rooms on the sixth floor.

She, Chloe and some of their classmates meet up there to discuss their inventions and swap ideas on the weekends when they're free. Chloe brings all sorts of people through; she likes showing off, a little. What exactly it is she's showing off, Aubrey's unsure. Nonetheless, she regards every person Chloe brings through with polite smiles and answers all their questions, even the dumb ones.

This time, Chloe walks in hanging off the arm of a boy named Tom.

Tom is a Chaser for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. She doesn't see where the Ravenclaw in him actually comes from, but maybe it's a family legacy thing. Anyway, Aubrey isn't supposed to be judging so hard because if the Magical world has taught her anything, it's that the usual standards of logic and sense don't exist. There are at least three dozen different kinds of knowledge. Tom makes very crafty plays on his broom. Aubrey doesn't have sufficient data to make a value-judgement. (People, the Wizarding kind especially, should never really be underestimated.)

Tom's not particularly interesting. He's an averagely good-looking guy. (That is to say, he's good-looking, undeniably, but average on a scale from good-looking to really good-looking. Aubrey's standards are somewhat unrealistic, so she tries to avoid commenting on anything.) He's politely charming. When they have classes together, he holds doors open for others. When it's sunny outside, he joins everyone else on the grass. He doesn't like Muggle music, doesn't care when he gets his Apparition licence and he prefers Charms to Transfiguration.

Aubrey doesn't really like Tom. She doesn't dislike him either. He's okay, mostly, and he treats Chloe well. They break up eventually without a hint of fanfare after a few months and things appear to settle back into their usual rhythm.

That's the way it seems, anyway.

It might be the break up with Tom or it might be the way Bumper Allen and his ding-a-ling friends were making catcalls at her the other day or those two things combined. It could be anything, come to think of it, and Aubrey is suddenly struck by realisation, with all the work that's been going on, she's been a terrible friend as of late.

She needs to cheer Chloe up. Fast.

This is not something she does. This is not something she's good at. Whenever Aubrey is feeling particularly down, she just does more things and the activity whittles the sadness away. Aubrey, words and feelings are not a good combination. Aubrey is more of an action person so doing something fun with Chloe (which is really the trick Chloe usually employs to cheer other people up too) seems like the obvious path of action.

That's why, when she finds Chloe sulking in her bed one weekend evening, she says:

"I think I may have found a book that can finally help us with the electricity problem. I'm going to need your help to get it. It's in the Restricted Section."

There is no actual book in the Restricted Section on the topic. Actually, maybe there is, but Aubrey has yet to find the title or even where to start on the matter. No one writes about Muggle inventions, except in passing to comment on how curiously bizarre the Muggles are. (The Muggle Studies section of the library is woefully dreadful at any rate. Aubrey could improve the literature herself when she graduates, but that's a thought for another time.)

Chloe likes adventure, though, and Chloe thinks sneaking around after dark is exciting. They don't find anything useful when they break into the library (and actually, they get caught pretty quickly once they do get it) but seeing the Restricted Section is enough to make Chloe awestruck in the way that only Hogwarts, with its secrets and mysteries, can ever do to a person.

They lose a fair chunk of house points again. Aubrey doesn't much care. She's pretty sure she earned about just as many in class so it all breaks even, minimum. Chloe starts smiling again and that makes just about everything okay.

* * *

**5.**

Chloe keeps staring at the Slytherin table during dinner. Aubrey tries not to judge, but perving on third years seems kind of dodgy to her.

This isn't quite like the way Chloe coos at all the first years before they get sorted and jokingly makes bets on which ones will turn out to be lookers. (Aubrey is better at this game, mostly because she's had year and years of celebrity child stars to go on from Muggle media that Chloe and her magic family hardly glance at.) This is more like the way Chloe pines after dreamy Quidditch players and prefects. Or maybe something in between, which would make sense, considering Chloe is staring at a third year.

Does Chloe have any shame? Really? Any shame at all? The poor girl she's (almost?) leering at is a fourth year at most. Aubrey is really trying to give her the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe Chloe's just staring, fascinated, by the Muggle headphones around the girl's neck. They're huge and interesting looking and Chloe is curious about most Muggle things, so maybe it's that.

As stubborn as Aubrey is, she can't really convince herself that's true. Chloe is blatantly checking this girl out and Aubrey feels very uncomfortable. That girl is tiny.

At least she doesn't act on it. Chloe has a big soft spot for the tiny, brunette Slytherin with the headphones and Aubrey is polite enough, at least, to suppress her urge to snoop. She doesn't even go out of her way to find the girl's name. (It's Beca, but it's not like she deliberately sought that information out. The girl's got a bit of a reputation for her temper, not that Aubrey heard anything about the time she decked those boys in her house for calling her friend a Mudblood. It's almost half-respectable, not that Aubrey can ever outwardly condone violence.)

Aubrey doesn't have a problem with Slytherins. She was almost a Slytherin herself, after all. Ambition, she can appreciate. Ambition, she respects. It's just that she doesn't see much of ambition in Beca who mostly lazes about and slinks around corridors with her overly eager Gryffindor friends. Maybe Chloe likes the mystery? (Aubrey is at a total loss in regards to what or whom Chloe likes. Enabling her friend's serial monogamy by covering for her absences and helping her keep pace with schoolwork is the best she does to support her. It's been six years of friendship and Aubrey still doesn't have a clue how feelings, let alone romantic ones, work.)

Beca's kind of a brat. Everyone's somewhat annoying at that age but Beca just grates on her nerves. The one time Aubrey ever had to talk to her, the kid just kept making snide remarks. Aubrey's a prefect now, so it falls into her line of duty to reprimand rule breakers and boisterous activity in the library. If Beca thinks she's above that, then she's wrong. (Aubrey thought Slytherins would be subtler about their bad behaviour, but not this one, apparently.)

Anyway, Chloe has an inexplicable fondness for the kid. Aubrey is Chloe's best friend, so when months later when Beca goes and gets her precious headphones confiscated, Aubrey fast-tracks them (or rather, liberates them out of the contraband locker) all the way back to the ungrateful little snot.

(They're good headphones. It's an indicator of good taste. For all Beca's ostensible unpleasantness, Aubrey will give her that, at least.)

* * *

**6.**

Everyone knows Aubrey can get kind of annoying, true, but at least in Hufflepuff they've stuck with her long enough to see all the better parts that come with it. Aubrey doesn't want to brag, but it must mean something if she's been appointed prefect _and_ the kids in her house have no complaints about it. The Hufflepuff Common Room always feels homey and comfortable and, for all their good-natured teasing about how Aubrey should be an honorary Ravenclaw for her bookishness or Slytherin for the wicked competitive streak (even years of placid good-naturedness from Badgers couldn't shake it off), they always welcome her to join in on everything from companionable silence to raucous mess making.

It's mellowed her out. Made her soft, even. When she was eleven, she would have retched at the thought, but at seventeen, the age of maturity in the Wizarding world, she appreciates it. Acceptance. Love. The stuff of stardust and fairy tales she once thought was just confined to novels and films. Friendship, enduring and strong. If Hufflepuff gave her the impossible, then the least Aubrey can do is try to match it.

People think Hufflepuff is where all the dud wizards go because people never bother looking beyond the neat little packages in front of them. Hufflepuff is full of greatness that the world just doesn't want to see. Aubrey will prove them all wrong, not just for herself but for her house too. She's determined to be the first wizard to figure out a way to get magic and electricity to play nice, even if it's just to confirm proof of concept.

For two years, Aubrey has been working on that problem. The quasi-workshop has moved through the years, but her piles of parchment stay in their neat little files. She toils away. It's something of a personal obsession.

Chloe comes in with potential flames, using whatever their current joint research project is as an icebreaker to schmooze the poor sods into a little something more. She's done in for years now, ever since Tom waltzed through the doors. (Chloe is actually still friends with Tom, go figure; though Aubrey can never actually fathom what it is they get up to together.) Aubrey doesn't even blame anyone for falling for Chloe's charms. Chloe gets so excited when she talks about music and her work with Aubrey; it really feels like she makes her own electricity buzz through the air.

It's not that big of a deal. Chloe likes a lot of people. Chloe's just got too much love in her, really. It must be part of the problem. Aubrey thinks there's going to have to be one hell of a person to keep up with her.

This time, Chloe brings Beca Mitchell.

Electricity and magic don't get along. Beca and Aubrey, in another world, might have been similar. Beca still rubs at her nerves, just by virtue of existing, but Chloe is Aubrey's best friend and Aubrey only knows Beca is passing, so she swallows whatever immediate distaste settles on the back of her tongue and goes through the same, polite motions she uses to greet all of Chloe's paramours.

This project is particularly suited to wooing Beca, she supposes, because of the younger girl's fondness for the giant, unplugged Muggle headphones always slung around her neck. (Plenty of witches and wizards like using Muggle items as fashion accessories, but at least Beca wears hers correctly.)

Chloe is uncharacteristically demure as she explains what they've figured out so far to Beca, so much so that Aubrey has to jump in more often than she usually does to fill in the gaps of the process. Beca is interested, genuinely, so Aubrey obliges her.

Aubrey doesn't see what the point of it actually is (since Aubrey will obviously be doing the work while Chloe does Beca) but she supposes even Chloe gets nervous introducing her girlfriends to her best friend every now and then.

Of course, pretty soon it become apparent Chloe brought Beca in, not to show off, but to collaborate, and that's when Aubrey gets a touch defensive. This is her project. She doesn't want some wet behind the ears kid without even an OWL to her name messing about with the notes.

"You're going to need a bigger place to carry out that experiment," Beca says, gesturing to a parchment sketch Aubrey pinned up on the stone with a sticking charm.

Aubrey's eyelid twitches. "What are you proposing?"

"We should look for a change in venue," she explains. "I know just the place."

'Just the place' turns out to be the Room of Requirement, the mythic room that appears fully furnished to whatever your needs are, and at a moment's notice to boot.

Of course, the Room of Requirement hasn't been seen in years. Not since the last War. Beca seems adamant she can find it, though, so they spend the rest of the day pacing around the seventh floor thinking really, really hard about wanting the Room to appear. (That's how you summon it, you see.)

Chloe suggests splitting up but Aubrey doesn't want to run the risk of stumbling upon her and Beca getting 'hands on' with one another as she wanders through the seventh floor looking for the Room. Instead, they all travel as a three-man pack and Beca kicks loose pebbles across the floor, petulant, firing off snide remarks Aubrey shoots down with cool measure. Beca's smirk offends her sensibilities, so Chloe attempts to diffuse the situation by sandwiching herself between the two, and running a soothing hand down Aubrey's wrist whenever Beca's comment strike a nerve or three or when the innuendo gets too offensive for Aubrey's tastes. Beca looks like she's having a field day, at any rate, even going as far to playfully jab Aubrey in the arm. (Chloe's lack of personal space must rub off on everyone.)

After getting lost (and arguing about getting lost, both figuratively and literally with Beca) they find a great big door they've never seen before. Aubrey shoves past Beca to get to it, finally convinced talking to the brunette wasn't a total waste of time after all. She pries the door open and carefully peek her head in, breathless.

"We found the Room of Requirement," Aubrey breathes. "We did it. We found it— Why does it have a bed in it?"

Someone coughs.

She glances at Chloe and Beca, and then blanches. "Oh," she says. "Oh! Gross. Stop looking at each other like that. Stop— Okay. That's it. I'm leaving. We can do this another day."

(You're not supposed to be in the Room of Requirement these days.

Chloe can't keep a secret or maybe Beca blabs about the best place to get a quickie is or maybe the walls of Hogwarts really do have eyes, but word gets out and they are shunted out. The school needs the Room of Requirement clear so they can repair the Room of Hidden Things, damaged, she remembers, in the 1990s after a skirmish between the Boy Who Lived and some Voldemort followers. The fire was so bad it managed to destroy a horcrux. Aubrey is mostly upset Chloe and Beca desecrated such an important site of history.)

* * *

**7.**

It's seventh year. Aubrey is Head Girl. It doesn't count for much, except the big single room she gets at on the seventh floor just across the part of the corridor that the moving staircases drop off a passerby.

It's a nice room. Big, roomy four-poster bed. Soundproofing charms so the ghosts can't bother her.

No one but her is supposed to go in it. Actually, the words 'hanky-panky' were specifically written on a list of things that were not permitted to enter her room or at least on the list of things Aubrey's not permitted to do in her room. (Distilling poisons is another thing she's not allowed to do in there. If she really wants to do the Potions experiment, it needs to be under the supervision of a professor. How dull.)

She showed it off to Chloe, once, but was maybe a little too afraid to let her through the doorway. Now, though, Aubrey's thoroughly checked the place for wards and anti-intruder alarms (and added a few of her own) so she's reasonably sure bringing Chloe in won't rattle the castle.

Lately, Chloe's been glum. Antsy, really.

It all boils down to Beca and how difficult it is for them to spend time, ahem, together.

It's not quite that Beca's father, the History of Magic Professor, disapproves of their relationship as much as he thinks Beca's too young to be doing anything but concentrate on her studies. She can date after her OWLs, that's what Chloe says he said. (He also doubled security around all the dorms and had the caretaker _and_ all the prefects increase their rounds of all the usually empty parts of the castle. That's not brought up, but his policies have really impugned on Aubrey's free time.)

Aubrey thinks Professor Mitchell's a smart man (his classes are great) and those are reasonable demands. For comparison, Aubrey's father doesn't think she should be dating until college, but there is no Wizarding college, actually, unless she'd like to be a healer or a Medi-witch. The Wizarding world is positively medieval so Aubrey would need to get an apprenticeship if she'd like to further her education or career. Still, Aubrey's father is making her study for standard Muggle qualifications alongside her NEWTs, though. Just the minimum ones and just in case. Aubrey thought it was all terribly stressful until she started thinking of them as another weird hobby, or like a surrogate relationship. Then she just started thinking she was a little crazy.

Aubrey must be a little crazy to have done some of the things she did. This next thing, for instance. But Chloe is Chloe and desperate times call for bigger guns.

"Chloe," Aubrey says, level. "I'm going back home for Christmas."

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, you told me," Chloe says. She's busy staring out through the window at Ravenclaw tower. Aubrey doesn't really understand _why_, but considers, maybe, she's just staring wistfully up at the sky since there's no place anywhere near the Hufflepuff dorms that lend a clear view of even the path to the Slytherin ones.

"I won't be using my room," she says, tossing down a bit of parchment with the special spells needed to bypass all the charms she's left to lock the place down when she's gone. (She trusts Bumper and his friends about as far as she can throw a Hippogriff.) "Please make sure you Scourgify everything before I come back."

Chloe takes a while to understand what it means, but then her face splits open with a huge, slightly terrifying smile. She pulls Aubrey in for one of her patently tight hugs.

"For serious," Aubrey wheezes, trapped in the middle of her death lock. "Scourgify everything."


End file.
